Friday, 25 May 2012

Eddie Lawson (on the Cagiva C591), carved in lime,viewed from the side and front this time. You can see clearly the veneers applied to the bike. The number boards and Cagiva logo are done in Maple, Agip logo in birds eye Maple and Ebony (which is a nightmare as it blunts the knife almost immediately) and Madrona and stained Maple for the helmet.The bike is approximately 33cm long.

At the time I began this, the Cagiva was the most beautiful race bike to ever grace a track. A few weeks after I started it, they launched the C593 which was even more beautiful, much more curvy but I had already taken off too much wood to adapt it to the new one. Still, it's a beautiful bike and it turned out well anyway.

This, if you were wondering whether I assemble these bikes out of separate pieces, is a photo of the beginning of a carving. This is the start of a carving of Aaron Slight on a Honda RC45 commissioned by the Castrol Honda World Superbike Team together with a carving of Carl Fogarty. I start with a technical drawing of the bike and dive in very cautiously from there.
I've only recently begun to sculpt in clay first before carving. Here, I just got on with it,fraught with anxiety at making fatal errors early on, which is very easy to do. Gung ho and accuracy are uneasy bedfellows

I just get the silhouette quite close before starting on the widths. However, I leave a couple of millimetres spare to soak up damage from tools and inaccuracies early on.

I'll show you more of the stages of how it developed into the finished article (below) soon.

About Me

I'm a sculptor, working mainly in wood. I've been working to commission since '96. I've undertaken a variety of work in different styles and materials, relief carvings,furniture,and promotional work. A speciality is motorcycle racing, having had commissions from the Castrol Honda WSB team and the Repsol Honda MotoGP team.Riders such as John Kocinski, Aaron Slight and James Toseland among others have examples of my work.My profile picture is a drawing by my sister Felicity, whose blog can be found in my profile details.